12/11/14 - Major Storm, Creek Flooding

Twitter- More continuous updates, a few more pictures.
Flickr - More vibrant pictures of trash as well as some highlights of wildlife in the neighborhood and Bay.

So I thought I would be able to get to at least some of that stuff (shopping carts, strollers, etc.) at some point in the near future, but I was gravely wrong, not mistaken, but wrong. As far as I am aware, all that stuff from three days ago is currently making it's way into Nature's Landfill, otherwise known as large bodies of water like the SF Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

A very big rainstorm made it to Silicon Valley (Yay! Some rain!) and promptly flooded all the creeks and waterways. It was raining heavily, and I happened to have a car today, so  thought I'd check out a few other parts of the creek.

 Here is the view from Monroe, facing south, toward the train tracks. Lots of water; sadly, all of this is just dumping to the bay instead of filling up reservoirs or wells.

 Here is El Camino Real facing north.

And El Camino Real Facing south.

 Lastly, I headed down to Pruneridge at Maywood Park, where I found a nice big pile of trash including a Little-Tykes style tricycle, not too unlike the tractor I pulled out. You may not be able to see it with the resolution of the photo posted, but that middle bucket has a high heel shoe and two spray cans plainly visible, and who knows what lies beneath.

On second thought, why don't I just crop it and give you the closeup. Hollow plastic tricycle and cans of spray paint. Are dumpings like these the source of all that miserable trash and hazardous waste that I came across one of my first few weeks of this blog?

Or

Did some very nice person or group of people trudge through this creek one day and bag all of this stuff up? Maybe a lot of this showed up from the flood just a few days ago like all the trash did in my neighborhood. Only, perhaps these people were much wiser, watched the weather report, and saw an even bigger storm was coming which would surely carry all of this to the bay.

If this latter possibility is indeed the case, I wish I could contact these people and thank them.

Here's the water coming from the south.

Here it's rushing under a bridge on Pruneridge.

And here it's heading toward the bay. Thankfully that trash is on the side and not in the creek.

And here's Maywood Park. I've never been here before, but it's quite pretty.

So there you have it, a heavy day of rain (still raining hard during picture taking) has finally come to drought-stricken California. However, it creates the ever-powerful litter freight-train constantly moving anything and everything in the waterways downstream to the bay. Unfortunately, I missed my chance to help and pull the carts and strollers out. Fortunately, it looks like someone else took the time and created a big heap of trash that is not going to the bay.

12/5/14 - Pac12 Oregon Vs. Arizona; Also, Post-Flooding

Twitter- More continuous updates, a few more pictures.
Flickr - More vibrant pictures of trash as well as some highlights of wildlife in the neighborhood and Bay.

So, here we are, two days after the creek flooded, without having seen much litter during the flooding. This is the Friday evening of the Pac12 Oregon Vs. Arizona game. Evening always makes things look pretty.

 So does a nice partly cloudy morning.

The creek looks good, the sun is shining, what lies ahead?

Here's a tire under the three bridges that must have been dragged downstream from the creek flooding.

Here's another different tire, also dragged down from somewhere upstream. If anyone has any insights as to what might be bubbling up between the two coots, I would love to know - could it be a turtle, or did I just happen to witness an air pocket in the sediment burst?

 The egret and his coot buddies enjoying the morning.

The creek doesn't look that bad, the sky is so pretty after all.

Looking closer at the ground and not the sky, we find trash, including a spray can, something that really bugs me.

A baby stroller? How on earth do these things make it into the creek in the first place?

A shopping cart as well, in very good condition.

Another, different store's shopping cart, also in seemingly good condition.

A third new tire.

A folding street sign of sorts.

An egret getting away from all this litter.

The heron, however, enjoys the company of a nice orange traffic cone.

A fourth tire.

And lastly, a second different model baby stroller that looks like it got buried pretty well.

Here's again the transition from natural reek to concrete lined - this is what it normally looks like with much less water.

So, sadly, I had a mad scramble at work, so I wasn't able to spend the two or so hours it would take to pull each and every one of these items out, so I figured I would pull them out the following week or over the weekend. These pictures are on a Monday (12/8/14), and I thought I could probably get them on Saturday.

But back to the more pressing issue, how do four tires, two shopping carts, and two baby strollers make it into a creek? I don't know, yet, but I hope to find out.

12/3/14 - 49ers Vs. Redskins Vs. Seahawks Vs. Flooding

I didn't have a chance to get in between the two games, and after the Seahawks we got some much needed rain. That means exciting creek flooding. Fortunately, it wasn't completely depressing like one of my first posts.

It gets pretty high since this creek is one of the four main thoroughfares for flood control of Silicon Valley, at least as far as I am aware. Going from east to west, there's: Coyote Creek, Guadalupe River / Alviso Slough, San Tomas Aquino Creek (this one) / Guadalupe Slough, and Stevens Creek.

Some days the creek floods the bike path, sometimes making things more difficult, and sometimes it's so deep it's impassable. Usually, the city closes off the bike path when the water gets dangerously high on the bike path.

Now here's where a lot of the litter collects from game traffic due to wind, etc. As mentioned prior, the wind blows the litter down the slope closer to the water over time, and now the water rose to meet it and take it to its final destination, whether that's the Bay or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Here's the same location looking back on the stadium. I will probably find that basketball on my next trip out to the bay.

Here's the underpass under highway 101. It's about 2' deep today here, enough to warrant pedaling through in a pretty low gear.

Here's the transition upstream from mostly natural waterway to concrete lined waterway.

So, very little litter seen floating by, which is nice to see, but also probably a whole lot washed away litter from the creek banks.